Greece’s land-based casino operators are struggling with declines in both visitor traffic and the money those visitors spend on gambling.
This week, Greek media outlet Ekathimerini quoted local industry sources saying the country’s nine brick-and-mortar casinos collectively welcomed around 1.33m visitors in the first six months of 2018, a 2.4% decline over the same period last year. Only three casinos reported individual visitation gains.
Total gaming turnover at the nine venues was down 1.8% year-on-year to €740m, while gaming revenue fell 3.2% to €116.2m. The decline follows a 3.8% decline in gaming revenue in calendar 2017. Again, only three of the nine casinos reported revenue gains, and two of these fortunate three only managed to get back into the black thanks to a particularly strong showing in June.
Greece’s occasionally chaotic casino industry is currently awaiting a major shakeup via a tender for the country’s first major integrated resort, which is to be built on the grounds of the old Hellinikon airport. The latest plan is for the tender to get underway by August 30 but the Greek government’s deadlines tend to be somewhat, er, elastic.
By way of example, there’s still no word on when the Greek government might get around to issuing its new permanent online gambling licenses, something the 24 Greek-facing operators currently operating via temporary permits have been anticipating for years now, even with the onerous plan to impose a 35% tax on online revenue.
Despite, or perhaps because of, this inaction, the Hellenic Gambling Commission announced earlier this month that it had added a further 1,083 domains to its blacklist of online gambling operators serving Greek punters without a local license, bringing the blacklist’s total number of naughty domains to 2,708.
Among the names making the latest blacklist update include numerous brands now connected with UK-listed operator GVC Holdings, including Ladbrokes, Gala, Coral and Eurobet. In January, GVC announced that it had put aside €200m to cover a back-tax demand from the Greek government, a judgment GVC continues to appeal.
